In the wake of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ (D) indictment, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is reportedly already looking to replace him.
Despite being pressured to resign in 2021 from his governor’s seat amid sexual harassment allegations, Cuomo believes he would fare well as the city’s next mayor. He reportedly still has millions of dollars left in his state campaign funds, which technically he can use.
According to the City and State of New York, Cuomo’s campaign has nearly $8 million. Adams’ campaign has only about $3 million in his war chest.
However, transferring to a potential mayoral campaign would be challenging. The outlet points out that most candidates don’t even try.
“The rules for who can contribute in the state are different than those in New York City, so a whole new committee under the Campaign Finance Board would have to be opened,” election and campaign finance lawyer Jerry Goldfeder said, adding that the first step is to file with the city.
After that, the law permits the transfer of funds between two committees if authorized by the candidate, but the process is both difficult and time intensive. To do so, a candidate would need to get all contributors from their state account to sign an agreement that their donation will be used for a different campaign. Given that there are different expenditure limits on the state and city level, the candidate would also need to report the costs associated with raising said donations from their state account, according to New York City campaign finance rules. Any transferred funds would not be eligible for the city’s matching funds program. They’d also be subject to the doing business limit if the contributor was listed in the city Doing Business Database at the time their contribution was made. Even if Cuomo wanted to try and transfer all of his funds, these rules would whittle down which contributions would be eligible.
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Since resigning from his governorship, Cuomo has denied all allegations. The Albany County District Attorney said that although the complaint was "credible," there was insufficient evidence to convict him.
Since his ousting, Cuomo has speculated that his political career is not over.
Earlier this year, Cuomo’s campaign paid a polling firm nearly $70,000 to conduct a survey to test his popularity among New Yorkers.
However, during an interview with HBO’s Bill Maher in June, Cuomo said he has “No current plans to make plans.”
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